The present invention relates to shoes that are worn on the human foot. More particularly, the present invention relates to shoes that are worn on the human foot and that provide shock absorption for a wearer.
Many shoes that are worn by people all over the world today are designed to provide some level of shock absorption for the wearer. Such shoes include running shoes, basketball shoes, tennis shoes, walking shoes, hiking shoes, certain dress shoes, etc. The shock absorption provided by these shoes not only provides a level of comfort to the wearer, but also provides protection to the wearer against injury resulting from impact of the wearer's foot on a floor or other hard surface.
A limitation of these types of shock-absorbing shoes is that they typically lose their shock-absorbing capability with normal use by a wearer. More particularly, as the shoes are worn by the wearer, shock-absorbing materials in the shoes' soles begin to become less resilient. Eventually, the loss of shock-absorbing capability in these shoes may result in an injury to the wearer when the wearer uses the shoes in a manner in which the full shock-absorbing capability of the shoes is required, such as running with running shoes for example.
A further limitation of these types of shock-absorbing shoes is that they fail to indicate to the wearer when the shock-absorbing capability of the shoes has fallen below a minimum acceptable level. Because of this limitation, the wearer may have no idea that the shoes that he or she is wearing are not providing the minimum level of shock absorption that the wearer desires. Consequently, the wearer may have to either first suffer an injury or guess that the shoes are worn out before deciding to obtain new shoes.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide devices and methods for indicating, to a wearer of a shoe, a loss of shock absorption in the shoe so that the wearer can know that it is time to obtain new shoes and thereby avoid injury.